Faerie Base Stockwell

Shokti Chateau is blessed by the visits of Eurofaeries this week as we go deeper into SPRING. Tadzio, Brother Hugz Harmony, Snoopy Moon brought their spirit here for the Libra Full Moon weekend, forming a brotherhood posse with Thunderbirds and Lovestar after the stunning afternoon of faerie drum, chat and spring bounce at Central Station on Friday. We became a band of leather faeries off out to an Amsterdam theme Saturday night at the Eagle in Vauxhall. Thunderbirds the Lion, Brother Hugz Harmony in hot leather pants the Bear, Tadzio the Snake and Shokti the Unicorn, complete with 10 inch horn…. not your usual leather bar look. Our spirits dived into the dark world of leathermen and came up for air some time the next day, dripping in ecstasy, having played, flirted and made merry with deviant divine characters of the shadowlands. In darkness consciousness is always being born. The Libra Full Moon served to keep the energy of the night harmonious, strong, and ‘respectful’ – this was a party where friendliness, connection, openness were high on the agenda alongside the pleasure zone Dirty Dick’s Playroom which featured a multiple glory hole ‘suckatorium’. But the sex didn’t have to take place in the dark. From the barside to the garden men played. Early tensions eased greatly and the night moved up several gears. We faeries had a lot of fun casting our joyful intentions, cheeky smiles and rainbow hearts into the mix, we arrived early and were the last to be thrown out, new found friends, amongst them Brazilians on their first night of a London holiday, at our sides, at 4am.

The Chateau is looking forward to the upcoming visits this week from Fauny and Faedra, coming from Netherlands and Paris. We will be talking about the Pan Gathering at Folleterre and have some news about it for the wonderful people who are planning to come.

Spring has got into gear, the growth part of the year is here. Connections, ideas, constructions.

Featherstone Castle Spring Gathering provided the 40 or so of us who made it along with an energetic cleanse and reboot, a chance to reset some inner buttons and receive vast amounts of boosting, healing, creative love energy, plus a good rest in the stunning spaciousness and ancient feel of Northumberland. Those early days of Spring give an energy of gentle, optimistic, growth, waking and breaking out of the winter shell and a time of the year when it seems we can work powerful healing energies of community. It’s left me very excited about our first ever Autumn Gathering – at the castle in October, giving us a chance for reflection on the summer’s journey and to nourish each other deeply before the winter inner time sets in. Community grows by us living it.

At this point of the Spring 20 years ago during my shamanic awakening I was experiencing highly charged energy rushes that kept me awake for days, writing, drawing, dreaming, sensing connections and patterns in all aspects of life that I had never noticed before. My first dip into pagan ideas produced explosions of enlightenment in my mind. Visions of a ‘heaven on earth’ future overwhelmed me and the idea that I had been born to help bring that into being dawned. Over the two decades since I have met many others who had similarly been awoken by Spirit to a bigger picture that they now serve. Each of us I believe has been evolving and learning to shine our light in our particular life sphere, attracting to us others who carry compatible vibrations. A point must come where each grouping of awakening souls that are currently finding their power becomes confident enough and able to turn up the intensity of their group soul flame. The many flames will then feed more into each other and their heat and light have a major impact on the sleeping world around them.

Beltane is the next destination on the Wheel of this Year. Beltane is a fire festival and a time to tune into the strong flowing energies of nature as the Spring surge reaches its peak. Radical Faeries in USA and Europe have claimed Beltane as a queer feast, celebrating passionately the earthy sacredness of sexuality in all its forms over several days. Hundreds of painted and costumed/naked queers dance around the MayPole every year at Short Mountain, Tennessee, part of an ecstatic festival of queer spirit, art and politics. For anyone drawn to experiencing Beltane out on the land in Europe, Folleterre Eurofaerie Sanctuary hosts a smaller gathering, usually of around 30-40 people, up in the Vosges Mountains of eastern France.

Ecstasy is important in gay life – ecstatic mind states feature strongly in our city scenes via drugs, sex parties and danceclubs. ….. yet ecstasy is so much more than a pill or a good fuck or night out… it is a communion with parts of the self that we do not access every day, it is an experience of soul consciousness that is connected to all things, that knows its oneness with all things. Accessing this part of ourselves brings us peace, love, healing, inspiration. Unfortunately the selfish way that ecstatic states are chased by most gay folk can lead to big problems. Our queer culture badly needs to wake up to the power of ecstasy and joy – to the ecstatic gifts that come from loving each other unconditionally. Drugs open powerful channels that already exist within us – with minds and hearts clear of hurts and confusions we can open to the innate bliss within our souls quite naturally and substance free.

On Friday May 1st this year the London Faeries are bringing ecstatic Beltane spirit to the city – with an evening of drumming, chanting, dancing and mingling at Wheatsheaf Hall, Vauxhall. There could be a special Beltane cruising zone on the balcony! (Maybe no suckatorium unless our carpenter faeries get inspired). We will be erecting, with music dance and sharing, an ‘etheric maypole’ inviting all faeries on all levels of existence to join in a raising of joyful, erotic, ecstatic queer spirit for the wellbeing of Planet Earth and all her inhabitants.

Beltane! Let’s turn up the light of our group soul flame, welcome the souls now finding the tribe and those still to come, and drum up beats that pump out the call to heart warrior queer spirits everywhere: there is MUCH more to being queer than sex, drugs, fashion and beauty: through various means and activities we can discover how to shine brightly in our souls as well as our fit bodies. We can lift and light up our spirits, when we take the leap and live from and for and even as love. Faerie space is a training ground for heart warriors, and for healers of the split between the body and the spirit. We have no vows or initiation ceremonies in our anti-cult, but perhaps one would aid our focus: to commit to JOY, ie to removing and healing the blocks that prevent it flowing. Joy flows from the core of us, from the inner child – the inner child is the faerie that we are… able to flow in the realms of imagination, dreamtime and spirit as in the fields of reason. Our drum ceremonies take us into this child mind space, where the left brain has nothing much to do as the intuition, the rhythms and the emotions lead the way. This can be like taking a trip – altered realities achieved through group presence, ie being present with and for each other, with shared intentions and heart feelings, journeying together for a couple of hours between the worlds, entering that space through music….. making it, listening and dancing to it. The chattering mind can stay at home: here the soul can express, soar, release and play. For a few hours we conjure a taste of the deep enriching faerie spirit of gatherings. Bringing this energy into the city we once again connect worlds.

Spring began dramatically with a Solar Eclipse New Moon falling on the day of the Equinox, and two weeks of building energies led to the Lunar Eclipse at full moon. Now the intensity might lessen, we have made the transition and are fully in the Spring zone: at the Shokti Chateau on Easter Sunday brunch was served outside in the garden for the first time this year. Beltane is less than a month away, but if it feels like it has arrived early, spring surges and earthy horny feelings coming on strong then that is due to Venus and Mars already being in the Beltane sign, Taurus. The urge to connect, to love, to play, to rejoice in life and its pleasures is strong right now, and can be very enjoyable indeed. When we put out our intentions to the Universe then allow ourselves to be led into adventures and explorations the pieces of the cosmic jigsaw arrange themselves in order to bring our dreams into reality. So this is a good time to dream big, dream beautiful, dream bliss.